@Alzie The norm in a typical MU*, much less an nWoD MU* is for inactive PCs to be put into the freezer rather than meeting some sort of back office end of their narrative.

Every indication suggests that the policy that staff will commandeer an inactive PC as an NPC or to finish them off off screen is not a written policy and whether it is commonly accepted or not, testimonials have indicated that it is handled in a very ad hoc manner. All that staff has to do is have this in writing on the wiki in a manner that outlines standard protocol in writing and maybe a line saying that they will handle this on a case-by-case basis in writing.

In. Writing. Clear. Unambiguous. Policy. Get it? In writing.

In the time I had to explain to you the conundrum, someone could've pinged Kingsmouth staff and made it so.

No invective about whether or not this policy is a good one. No particular interest in casting any ill will on the game. As an non-involved third party observer, it seems that this would be a good idea and a rather simple fix. I have said this now a couple times now in no ambiguous terms.

Like a story of a Hawkwood Knight, a Decados Intelligence Officer, a Muster mercenary, and an al-Malik pirate captain that are led around by an Eskatonic crazy who has been seeing visions about a mysterious MacGuffin. Each of them have their different agendas and there may be break out sessions where the GM can explore their personal motivations in the face of communications from home to secure the artifact. They have to work together because each one has bits and pieces of the puzzle... but want to secure the artifact for their own faction. Romances and historical animosities optional but highly recommended.

On their heels is a Li Halan fundamentalist who is trying to destroy said artifact but motivated/manipulated by a demon-possessed 'old' Li Halan lord, a rogue Hazat Dervish who blames one of the protagonists for the death of his sister, and a splinter group of Engineers orchestrating a coup against the local Muster warlord who controls the region where this search is going on. The Orthodox has gotten wind of this search and has their own interests in the region, armed with Avesti who threaten to burn down everything and anything that moves.

Depending on how the search ends, it radically changes the background for the next sprint. If the Decados acquires it, the Decados start out with certain bonuses that remain until something else changes. Or if the Li Halan demon lord takes possession, add malevolent spirits/zombies. Or if the Engineers win their coup, add tech components to the next sprint. If the Muster win, lots of guns... a whole lot of guns. If the Orthodox and Avesti 'win' well, Game Over, restart the table top to a place before the pivot point and tell your players not to fuck up again.

If there are multiple TT campaigns going on, a 'successful' end of a campaign in one side of the planet may suddenly affect conditions on the other side of the planet.

Yep. Moth to a flame. Drink more wine!

The best ST/GM brings together a random group of PCs into a story where they play an integral part as an ensemble. Some PCs may not get as much spotlight and others may indeed get relegated in a scene or two, but a good GM will know how to bring other people in. He or she will also limit the focus in advance so a pretty princess with no combat skills whatsoever is not in a heavily combat-oriented plot unless there's a good twist involved.

A good long-term showrunner will help each character feel like they are special in some way and make them the star of their own episode, even if they play tiny minute roles for the overall plot.

It's about trust with the ST/GM to help PCs move forward, grow, and sometimes die with dignity, explaining the risk of death or maiming and moving forward with a plot after everyone is aware of the risks. Sometimes death will have meaning. Other times, death will be totally pointless... but the goal of a game runner is to tell a good story where everyone is mature and able to have fun.

If a player cannot accept PC death gracefully, they probably shouldn't be playing on your game. If a PC goes Amber on you and refuses to RP except in staff sanctioned safe plots and only with a small niche of PCs, then that PC is going to have his or her toys taken away by someone more deserving. The system IC, as designed by staff, should accommodate for this but in a manner where players drive the change, not the staff as to seem like arbitrary staff fiat.

Everyone dies. Make it fun. Those that can't accept it don't belong on any game. I'm a jerk. Etc.

I'd like to just be a bartender in space. With a handsome beard. A bartender in space with a handsome beard.

That could be hydrochloric acid you are drinking. I don't know. I am not a doctor.

That is all.

@dvoraen :shoves:

That is all.

Basically, Kirkwall is Sunnydale. And your Hawke is Buffy the Vampire slayer.

I liked Merrill's story line a lot, even if it usually ended in Elven genocide outside of town. Look, I didn't hate Fenris. He just happened to be dreadfully redundant in my party and his demeanor and looks did not appeal to me at all. I like my men manly and my women... uh... womanly. Elven men, by default, are just not manly. Case in point, LOTR and Orlando Bloom. I don't care how hot and bad ass he is, he looks like a girl.

Then again, I may just be strongly biased against Fenris. After all, I was sleeping with Anders, who I made into a dirty Blood Mage in DAO:A. In spite of or because of, he turned out all weird with a healthy dose of bad writing. I really just wanted to find him a fucking kitten and DA2 wouldn't let me do that. THAT would have saved Anders entirely.

RL preferences aside, however, I usually just go with the so-called canonical Romance that Bioware likes to slap onto your Character. MaleShep ME1 was Liara, MaleShep ME2 was Miranda, MaleShep ME3 was Liara again. Male DA:O was strongly Morrigan between her and Leliana. DA:OA had no romance but my Male DA:O Warden would've totally slept with DA:OA Anders. Male and Female DA2 was Anders.

Gay DA:I Male was Dorian and Straight DA:I Male was Cassandra. That said... I got the weird vibe that the canonical Romance for DA:I was actually no romance.

I disliked FF7 and FF8. My favorite FF was FF6, followed by FF4, followed by FF5, with Chrono Trigger in between FF6 and FF4. I liked FF9. I am still unconvinced that RPG writing had not peaked with FF6 and a slight taper to CT before collapsing during the modern 3D era. FF6 had a huge cast of characters but you really cared about every last one, even the ones that were really whiny and annoying like Locke. DA2 had a surprisingly good set of well-written characters overall.

You know what was truly monstrous? No, not how they screwed up Anders. Did anyone notice how they reskinned Zevran from DA:O to DA2 to follow the new Elf model paradigm. It looked like they took his face, injected it with botox, and bashed it in with a frying pan til his face stuck a certain way.

Edit:

This is Fenris: http://i1306.photobucket.com/albums/s573/Stormborn8811/Fenris2_zps124a5a7d.png
This is female Korean Pop Artist Lee Jung Hyun: http://www.allkpop.com/upload/2010/05/100520_LJHmubank_main.jpg

I'm a 90/10 Gay/Straight Bisexualish Gay Male IRL who plays a wide variety of characters. I had tried out a female PC a very long time ago on Firan, and the female PC I played on a pay-for-play MUD to get fancy in-game items but I don't play them anymore. At most, I will NPC one or two but in a strictly non-sexual manner.

I used to have very strict boundaries between hetero-normative straight male PCs in RPG MUs and openly gay males in Shangrila. As my tilt got from like 60-40 Gay/Straight Bisexual to 90/10 mostly Gay, my appetite for playing straight PCs in either genre declined accordingly although I do did play more polysexual/bisexual PCs for the most part in RPG MUs (until I basically dropped out of RPG MUs entirely).

My favorite PCs were brutally decadent in terms of their sexuality, where it was sort of an exploration of a world that isn't in austere gay/straight dichotomies but fluid and open to both relationships and flesh-on-flesh activities that are driven by innate desire. Even my hard sub gay male PC on Shang engaged in the occasional heterosexual activity to great and explosive effect. My more dominant PCs tend to be much more heterosexual for some reason.

I get totally squicked at women playing men and men playing women. I don't know why, I just do. I will RP with anyone but I don't dip into that sort of cognitive dissonance IRL or in-game (nothing wrong with it, just not my thing) but we can still do brunch.

I've actually started to forget all the PCs I've played over the years. Or in some cases, the MU themselves. The running gag in recent memory is naming my PCs with L names.

Edit: I keep making errors. I'm old guys.

WORA: Arcosanti

Kushiel's Debut:
Leo - Duc Rousillon, Decadent Deviant

Terre d'Ange
Donato - Caerdicci Noble... uh, Deviant by Virtue of Not Being d'Angeline

Fading Suns: Star Crusade:
Lyov - Decados Viscount, Viscount Auberry, Decadent Deviant

Fading Suns:
Caius - Hawkwood Baron, Ruler of Sheva, Closet Republican
Leo - Gunslinging Closet Hawkwood

Haunted Memories:
Leon/Valent - Mad Architect of the Monolith
Legion - Multiple Personality Rotgrafen

St. Petersburg:
Lyov - Taifa Gangrel Invictus Miscreant

The Reach:
Leo - Secret Kallisti Sworn of the Axe
Haakon - Political Rotgrafen Viking Pirate

5th World:
Cid Lothario Orelle - Mad Scientist, 27th in Line of Succession

Corporate Expanse:
Ryan - Drunk Mercenary

Aether:
Cyril - Drunk Aesir

Aether II:
Valerian - Bureaucrat on the Aesir Side

Aether Odyssey:
Valens - Bad-Ass Aesir Soldier

Firan:
I don't remember

Reno:
Lee

I have a friend who's an ectomorph. He can eat 5k Calories a day and still have a difficulty gaining weight. I'd love to exchange 20% of his ectomorphness with 20% of my endomorphness.

A building/house/shop/church/grave is burning/destroyed by earthquake/flooded/swallowed by a sinkhole, time is running out, do we put out the fire/let Timmy burn alive/explore ancient ruins filled with unspeakable horrors/TS.

It'll be interesting to see how the mechanics change @Runescryer , the old stuff was just difficult to work with and the angst that was generated by certain people trying to overlay CK2 on top was just a recipe for angst and dramarama.

FS, in my opinion, worked best as a quick tabletop campaign, but the mechanics were not at all quick. I know folks kinda trashed an online TT format for a Fading Suns game that I proposed a while back, but I always felt like some of the best stories were not about backroom politics but riding on top of a space ship and shooting down enemies galloping on horses.

I'll also be interested to see if the political system has been given a little more meat with the Kickstarter. FS has always had a tumultuous time both in print and in MU*s and I find myself kinda skeptical but cautiously optimistic.

I will take credit for this thread being topical (thanks @Runescryer ) but it's been about 2-3 years since the last Fading Suns thread fizzled out.

I guess it probably belongs more in the Shout in the Dark but it's just curiosity really of whether there has been any new projects envisioned or if the entire gang of players are even alive.

Kickstarter looks interesting though. It took them a long time to get things restarted on Ulisses Spiel's side of things... I thought they acquired back in 2018.

I had a bad dream that I was still playing a Fading Suns game.

Come at me.

GMs that cater to either one individual or to the lowest common denominator ("We want everyone to feel included/have fun") at the expense of the rest of the PCs. I'll focus on the latter.

Inclusion in a plot is not in itself bad. There is a lot to be said about a GM who can get a random room of strangers together towards building a story together. The problem is when the GM has to or wants to drag the weakest player along (whether s/he is not an appropriate PC for that scene, whether s/he has no real business in that milieu, and/or s/he is not well regarded in a given scene, IC or OOC). Obviously this is more endemic to MUs than TT but it's frustrating when a GM allows the weakest or most obnoxious player dominate the discourse because the GM feels sorry or otherwise wants to include that player into the game.

It's like that unpopular kid in school that you had to invite to your birthday party. No one liked the kid, he smells, and tells awful jokes about murdering babies, but you have to work him in and expend energy dealing with that kid to make him feel like he fits in, often by alienating the birthday kid and everyone else. My That kid's parents would be way more popular and wouldn't tank their kid's social standing by just not inviting that classmate who ends up being a meth abuser domestic violence local in later life.

Hypothetically of course.

A building/house/shop/church/grave is burning/destroyed by earthquake/flooded/swallowed by a sinkhole, time is running out, do we put out the fire/let Timmy burn alive/explore ancient ruins filled with unspeakable horrors/TS.

#sorrynotsorry for the thread necro but I have a certain story I usually like to tell and certain story motifs that get me excited so a lot of my characters have been cut from the same vein, er cloth. Inwardly lovable, gruff, broken.

What started to happen during my terminal phase of playing MUs was that I started to lock down into certain tropes or PCs to play and became exceedingly lazy in successive chargens to pretty much create two kinds of PCs that were interchangeable in any setting. Each new game and each new iteration, I found myself reusing more and more bits and pieces of the prior character wholesale instead of inventing something novel or interesting. What was sort of a repeating trope morphed into just pure laziness and resignation that a game is never a permanent thing but a temporary expedient rushing towards the inevitable unsatisfactory end (when was the last time a MU* satisfactorily ended for you instead of fizzling out)?

Post-MU* Apollonius is more or less left with side characters/support characters that desperately hide from the spotlight. Comic relief, niche concepts, or fetch quest givers. Different names but practically interchangeable.

@salty I think that would ruin any interest in RP for me, especially if it is in the context of a generally non-sexual RP MU.

Back when I used to TS more often with more RP partners, I could usually spot the female playing a male by their description of male orgasm. I would imagine the same can be said about a male playing a female for someone who is female.

I think that for me, it's a real downer when I TS that the person engaging in the act actually has never felt the sensations would happen in the meatspace. I don't have an issue with RPing females that play males and vice versa. But between the lack of a shared physical resonance (and my personal, anecdotal experience that many people that TS females as males or males as females have been batshit crazy, says the crazy person) I just really don't like that sort of TS experience. Doubly so if I find out they've gone beyond just intentionally concealing their sexuality to outright lying about it. Kinky TS requires a modicum of trust and shared empathy that cuts into RL... and someone who is lying to me... I can't extend that trust.

In my old age, I've accepted that I predominantly like men in both the meatspace and online and I just don't have the bandwidth to mess around with TS that I am not particularly attracted to IRL. I suppose that's another reason why if I'm going to be fucking or being fucked by men online, I better get the real thing.

That said, if Charlize Theron or Lucy Lawless walked up to me and told me to drop my pants, shoves a gag in my mouth and tells me we're going to fuck in an alley where there's a good chance someone will see us, I mean. Yes. RL or IC. Fuck Yes.

I've actually started to forget all the PCs I've played over the years. Or in some cases, the MU themselves. The running gag in recent memory is naming my PCs with L names.

Edit: I keep making errors. I'm old guys.

WORA: Arcosanti

Kushiel's Debut:
Leo - Duc Rousillon, Decadent Deviant

Terre d'Ange
Donato - Caerdicci Noble... uh, Deviant by Virtue of Not Being d'Angeline

Fading Suns: Star Crusade:
Lyov - Decados Viscount, Viscount Auberry, Decadent Deviant

Fading Suns:
Caius - Hawkwood Baron, Ruler of Sheva, Closet Republican
Leo - Gunslinging Closet Hawkwood

Haunted Memories:
Leon/Valent - Mad Architect of the Monolith
Legion - Multiple Personality Rotgrafen

St. Petersburg:
Lyov - Taifa Gangrel Invictus Miscreant

The Reach:
Leo - Secret Kallisti Sworn of the Axe
Haakon - Political Rotgrafen Viking Pirate

5th World:
Cid Lothario Orelle - Mad Scientist, 27th in Line of Succession

Corporate Expanse:
Ryan - Drunk Mercenary

Aether:
Cyril - Drunk Aesir

Aether II:
Valerian - Bureaucrat on the Aesir Side

Aether Odyssey:
Valens - Bad-Ass Aesir Soldier

Firan:
I don't remember

Reno:
Lee

@dvoraen :shoves:

That is all.